Тhe gated community in China: ethics and the pattern of settlement

Abstract

Recognized as a global phenomenon, the gated community has provoked heated discussions from various perspectives, including social, political, economic, anthropological, and geographical ones. Particularly due to the obvious spatial demarcation and social segregation embodied by the fortress-like forms, the socialspatial aftermath of gated community, has become the major focus of those multidisciplinary debates. Moreover in the practical world, despite the fact that the gated communities, have embraced unprecedented levels of prevalence, pervasion and variety, notably in China where such patterns have become the standard form of contemporary residential development and widely welcomed by all social classes and groups, it has been gradually noticed that the predominant gated communities in China have raised other public issues than social and spatial segregation, such as the greatly reduced land-use efficiency, the restricted transportation network and the negative impact on the well-being of public spaces (Huang and Feng, 2008; Wang, 2010; Wang, 2014). Under such circumstances, Chinese government has officially announced the reforms of the current urban residential wards in China by gradually removing the gates of the contemporary gated communities and “danwei” (work-unit compounds), which has inevitably provoked a variety of controversies (Liu, 2016).